Oplan Bantay Laya has two equally ugly aspects. First, it concentrates military and police forces on a number of guerrilla fronts at every given time in order to perpetrate massacres, mass intimidation, arbitrary arrests, torture and forced evacuations of entire communities through bombings, artillery fire, machine gun fire, arson and bulldozing. Second, it engages in the extrajudicial killing, abduction and torture of legal activists, including local progressive party leaders, workers, peasants, women, youth, religious, journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates.

OBL II promises to be the same animal with a more vicious bite. Gloria Arroyo in January released an additional 1 billion pesos for her fascist security forces, ostensibly to increase their combat capabilities. About P300 million out of this budget has been allocated for intelligence operations, including for the assassinations and attacks against the legal progressive movement.